National Apprenticeship Week

Published on March 5th, 2018

National Apprenticeship Week

This week is the 11th National Apprenticeship Week (NAW 2018).

Throughout the week, we will be sharing a series of short Q&A sessions with our past and current apprentices, to give you an idea of what it’s like to do an apprenticeship and where it could take you. To kick things off, we spent 10 minutes with Jordan, finding out about his experiences:

Fact File:

Name – Jordan Allen

Apprenticeship – Technical Support Apprenticeship

Current Role – Support Analyst

Q. What type of Apprenticeship did you do?

A. I did a Technical Support Apprenticeship through Cirencester College.

Q. What made you apply for an apprenticeship within a software company?

A. At school and college I didn’t enjoy classroom and book-based learning. I always found that I learnt a lot more from practical learning styles, like in IT where it was more hands on and I could solve problems. I wanted a way I could get another qualification but start getting some practical experience under my belt (and not getting in huge debts by going to University!).

Q. What attracted you to the role and the company?

A. One of my friends already worked here who had also done an apprenticeship. He couldn’t speak highly enough of the apprenticeship scheme and the business, so he recommended it to me.

Q. Would you recommend an apprenticeship to others? (All)

A. Definitely! The main attraction for me was getting work experience and getting a qualification at the same time, without the debts of a university degree! During an apprenticeship, you also get a lot of one-to-one tuition and practical experience.

Q. How was it balancing full-time work with the qualification?

A. It wasn’t that bad – At school I had done extra IT and Maths classes after hours, so I was used to doing extra work in the evenings anyway. I carried this forward when I started at Capita and made sure I had enough time to get everything finished for my assignments.

Q. How did you prepare for the application and interview process?

A. My College helped us prepare by running mock interview sessions. This was really helpful to knowing what kind of questions to prepare for and just building confidence in speaking to new people. When I had my actual interview, it was quite informal which also helped ease my nerves.

Q. What made you interested in choosing a career in IT & software?

A. I’m really interested in IT in general – before I joined Capita WFM, I’d already built a computer in my spare time. I wanted to work in an industry I was interested in, and I’m really glad that I did.

Q. What’s surprised you about your apprenticeship?

A. Probably the amount of experience that everyone has within the business that I’ve been able to draw down on both for my coursework and in real-life applications to help resolve issues for our customers.

Q. What has been your biggest achievement so far?

A. I’d say it’s definitely been joining the Premium Support team only 6 months after finishing my apprenticeship. It’s been a significant step up in the level of work required and the amount of investigation needed to resolve tickets for customers, but I absolutely love it.